Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: Alamo-Girl; xzins; TXnMA; betty boop; James C. Bennett; MarkBsnr; MHGinTN
On your first point, my testimony is not a proof. It is a statement of fact

God is not a fact, but something some people believe in. Facts are provable. Otherwise they are not facts.

I would not "prove" God at your request for the same reason

If you could prove the existence of God then you would be the first human to do so. So, don;t hold back!

I would not prove my brother had you suggested that he is a hypothesis or pink unicorn.

If you insisted that a pink unicorn is your brother I would it is a hypothesis, and an unlikely one (a) no one has ever seen a unicorn and (b) unicorns are something human minds postulated, and (c) if they did exist, unicorns (as described by human fancy) are ontologically unrelated to humans. The same reasons apply to any deity. Therefore, your argument is sophism.  

On your second point, the number of prior universes in a physical cosmology (if any) is irrelevant because:  In the absence of space, things cannot exist. In the absence of time, events cannot occur. Both space and time are required for physical causality, e.g. a Big Bang.

How do you know time and space did not exist eternally but God did?

All such physical cosmologies accomplish is to move the goalpost back to a prior universe relying on the pre-existence of, but never explaining the origin of, real space, real time and real physical causality.

How do you explain the origin of God? You don't! You assume he existed eternally. If you can assume that A existed eternally, why not B and C?

In sum, God whose Name is I AM or YHwH (He IS) often translated to "The Lord" cannot be denied.

More sophism. No one denies a name that can be found in a book. However, a name doesn't prove the subject named exists. Your belief or testimony of your belief does not constitute an objective proof.

Or as Physicist once put it (avoiding the obvious theological reference as scientists are wont to do) "existence exists."

In other words, the world exists. That's true. That which exists is. A rock, a gecko, a galaxy...where does "theological" come into this? 

On your third point, the "muwth muwth" of Genesis 2:17 is a Hebraism, an intensifying infinite absolute.

Your own link proves you wrong, AG. I intentionally abstained from using similar links in order not to drive the point too harshly. If you go back to your "muwth muwth" (which is not what the text reads, but rather muwth tamuwth*), you explained as the death of the body and the soul.

(*Your source—let me guess: Blue Letter Bible?—gives the root words, not how they appear in the text; diversify your sources before jumping to conclusions..)

Nothing of the sort does the Genesis 2:17 mean. It merely stresses that Adam will die, and it does so in a typical Jewish linguistic style known as Hebraism, which is characterized by a doublet, or repetition, of the verb in order to stress (or intensify) the point being made.

There are no two deaths, one for the soul and one for the body, as you implied when you wrote ("death death") for Adam, but one, as promised by God. 

The argument that Adam will die on the day when he eats the fruit did not mean the same, earth day, but a 1,000-year day is also a stretch since Adam's "earthly clock" didn't start ticking supposedly until he would have sinned, and the Bible says he died before he was 1,000 years old.

What Gen 2:17 says is that when Adam eats the fruit he will become mortal. That's all. Not dead in soul and body, not dead a millennium henceforth, just that he will be subject to death. Plain and simple.

438 posted on 01/19/2011 11:21:23 AM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 419 | View Replies ]


To: kosta50
Since 'eternal' is a temporal expression, why do you use it in your argument? ... The term 'ex nihilo' should be taken to mean 'without reliance upon' and we are offering to you that dimensions like Time and Space would be something your notion of god would need in order to create. You are arguing in a circular fashion, assuming that which is the actual essence of the debate, that before Time and before Space, is I AM, and I AM does not need pre-existing conditions, God authors the conditions, God authors the information which then uses the conditions to create.

When you jump into a circle, in effect stating 'before ex-nihilo', your perspective cannot come to any other conclusion than what you've built into it by starting from a false premise.

439 posted on 01/19/2011 11:43:12 AM PST by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 438 | View Replies ]

To: kosta50
"The argument that Adam will die on the day when he eats the fruit did not mean the same, earth day ..."

Prove your exegesis or admit you are on the same foundation that you are seeking to disabuse. You might draw a clue from what Jesus said regarding the young man who pled he had to wait to follow Jesus until his father died ...

444 posted on 01/19/2011 12:23:16 PM PST by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 438 | View Replies ]

To: kosta50; MHGinTN; xzins; TXnMA; betty boop; James C. Bennett; MarkBsnr
On the first point, it should be clear to you by now that I will never yield the rules of engagement to anyone who has suggested that God is a hypothesis or a pink unicorn.

God is not a hypothesis. He lives. His Name is I AM. I’ve known Him for a half century and counting.

On the second point, space, time and causality are part of the creation not properties of – or restrictions on – the Creator of them.

Indeed, any being coming into existence subsequent to the existence of space/time and physical causality could not be The Creator, Alpha, El Shaddai (God Almighty), I AM, YHwH (He IS) which is also translated to The Lord.

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. - Revelation 1:8

And again,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. – John 1:1-4

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether [they be] thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all [things] he might have the preeminence. For it pleased [the Father] that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, [I say], whether [they be] things in earth, or things in heaven.– Colossians 1:15-20

That there was a beginning of real space and real time was the most theological statement ever to come out of modern science (Jastrow.) The measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation from the 1960s forward all accrue to the same point: that the universe is expanding. That means that there was a beginning of real space and real time, that space/time does not pre-exist but is created as the universe expands. “In the beginning, God created…”

That no physical cosmology (big bang/inflationary model, cyclic, imaginary time, multi-verse, ekpyrotic, etc.) can explain the beginning of real time is considered the great weakness of them all. All such physical cosmologies presuppose space, time and physical causality even though we know space/time does not pre-exist and yet must exist before there can be physical causality.

The exercise in post 363 is as simple as I can make it and still illustrate that the beginning of space/time and therefore physical causality requires an uncaused cause.

On the third point, the Hebraism in Genesis 2:17, the repetition of the word means that Adam was cursed with more death than a simple “lights out” physical death.

And concerning the curse being “in the day” and Adam living over nine hundred years, I refer you back to my post 317. To the Jews, early Christians and to me, the repeated statement that a day to God is equal to a thousand years to man is not a vague reference. It is literal, as evidenced by the curse and how long Adam lived, and has to do with prophecy.

But Spiritual truth cannot be discerned by a natural man.

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. - I Corinthians 2:14

God’s Name is I AM.

479 posted on 01/19/2011 8:33:03 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 438 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson